Security chief visits Jefferson

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard handed a tattered American flag to the nation's security czar Wednesday and asked him to devote every possible resource to reestablishing a "sustainable living condition" in the suburban community within a month of Hurricane Katrina's landfall.

Broussard also asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to "build radio towers that are fortresses" so storm victims stuck in their homes and refugees stranded outside their neighborhoods can get up-to-the-minute information anywhere in the nation. And he pushed the need for ramped-up federal efforts to combat coastal erosion to low-lying areas to protect greater New Orleans against another catastrophic hurricane.

In recounting the private session of about 25 parish and federal officials, Broussard said he eschewed Chertoff's request to tour wind- and flood-ravaged Jefferson neighborhoods Wednesday. By the time he arrived for a 5 p.m. meeting at the parish's Emergency Operations Center in Marrero, Chertoff would have witnessed the worst of Katrina's massacre during earlier visits to Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, Broussard said.

"Jefferson Parish would have seemed like a cakewalk, " he said.

Broussard also related in detail a chronology starting Aug. 26 that began with a parishwide evacuation order and ended with Jefferson left in a tangle of downed trees, smashed buildings and as much as 15 feet of water in some east bank areas that were swamped by the Aug. 30 breach in the 17th Street Canal, according to the parish president and other local officials who attended the meeting. He said it will take 21 days to remove the water from Old Metairie and neighborhoods around Airline Highway.

Chertoff asked for numbers of residents who may have perished in Katrina, those who evacuated and those who stayed to weather the storm in their homes. Broussard said he did not know such details yet, adding that officials have not begun to search for the dead, those attending the meeting said.

Broussard also said that in the days before the hurricane, he asked for medical personnel from across the country to head to Louisiana to provide support for local doctors, nurses and pharmacists. Finally on Wednesday, 200 medical professionals arrived from Maryland after that state's governor volunteered their services.

To begin the 40-minute meeting, Broussard handed to Chertoff a ragged flag he got Wednesday during a quick trip to Plaquemines Parish and asked the national security chief to present it to President Bush.

"This flag represents the Greater New Orleans area, " Broussard said he told Chertoff. "We are ripped. We are torn. We are shredded. But we're still Americans. Send us all you can and restore this community like you would restore this flag."

Elsewhere Wednesday in Jefferson, residents flocked back to their homes to survey damage as armed National Guard soldiers, most from Missouri, patrolled major intersections and about a hundred New York City police fanned out to join forces with thousands of local sheriff's deputies and municipal police to maintain order.

Some residents arrived in pickups or with U-Haul trucks to cart out mattresses, chests of drawers, linens and keepsakes that Katrina spared. But others turn their front-door keys to return home for good despite a general lack of electricity, water and sewerage services and a request from parish officials for everyone to get out by 6 p.m. today.

In Jean Lafitte, Taddese Tewelde proudly opened the doors to the Piggly Wiggly across from Town Hall on Highway 45 as electricity flashed on in the hamlet's northern areas after noon.

Though his frozen foods, meats and produce spoiled when Katrnia knocked out power last week, Tewelde sold snacks, cleaning supplies, soda, cakes and paper goods at pre-storm prices. His beer and cigarette cache was stolen when he evacuated to Baton Rouge last week.

Further down the bayou, Tracy LaBella said he'd be shopping at the food mart in coming weeks. He didn't care that power and telephone service still was out at his home on the Barataria banks near the Intracoastal Canal, or that officials planned to enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew starting Friday morning.

But LaBella had rigged a generator to run his air conditioner and planned to house three adults and three kids at the property while he rebuilds his home.

Despite the inconveniences, life seemed to be getting back to normal Wednesday, as 12-year-old Trey Brewer, who lives with his mother and LaBella, showed off a prize that Katrina probably deposited in the coastal waters.